Andrew Arato

Poiiticai Theoiogy and

Popuiism

SOME OF OUR SIGNIFICANT POLITICAL CONCEPTS ARE SECULARIZED

theological ones. Not all of them. Some major religious-political
concepts are theologized profane ones. What is crucial is that nontheo-
logical concepts Hke territory and population can also be theologized,
as in "sacred homeland" or "the People." Such is the main effort of polit-
ical theology: the preservation and imposition of concepts and figures
of thought in political theory, inherited ftom monotheism, however
transformed. It can only be countered by the further secularization and
disenchantment of poHtical concepts, the preservation or the reestab-
lishment of their secular and rational character. Why we should engage
in this secularizing effort is the topic of this paper.
By political theology I do not mean only a politics that preserves
the entire substance or stmcture or substantial contents of theology
in secularized forms, nor do I mean every possible use of religion and
theology proper in poHtics, the broad meaning impHed by de Vries and
Sullivan (2006). With the proviso below, I am using the term in Carl
Schmitt's sense of the secularization of monotheistic religious concepts
for political theory and practice. Mindful of Hans Blumenberg's (1983)
powerful if ambivalent critique, I do not identify political theology
with the assertion of causality for theological origins, even a hypotheti-
cal one as in Weber's "Protestant ethic" thesis, nor vdth the claim of
substantial structural identity of theological and "secular" concepts
as in Karl Loewith's Meaning in History. Neither Weber's nor Loewith's
conceptions are primarily political. Not being theories of politics,
they are not poHtical theologies. Causahty and substantial identity are

social research Vol. 80 : No. 1 : Spring 2013 143

neither sufficient nor necessary to indicate the presence of political
theology. I find Blumenberg's idea of "re-occupation" only ofthe ques-
tions and not ofthe answers of theology powerful, but with the proviso
that for that re-occupation the "transformed" linguistic resources and
stmctures of monotheistic religion play a key role (as he is forced to
admit) (Foucault 2003, 74-80).
Thus, I beheve one can speak of partial identity of substance in
addition to the re-occupation stressed by Blumenberg. This step leads
not to the rehabilitation of political theology that he feared but to a diag-
nosis of its presence in modem and contemporary pohtical thought. In
his fear of political theology, Blumenberg went too far toward trying
to argue that there is really no such a thing at all. With this reserva-
tion the shift of emphasis from substantial identity to the legitimat-
ing function of re-occupation remains important. That was already the
role of the king's two-bodies doctrine in the variety of forms explored
by Kantorovwcz (1981). The famous Schmittian thesis concerning the
secularization of theological concepts too imphed the mobilization of
political theology in the sense of "re-occupation" for purposes of legiti-
mation.

CARL SCHMITT'S CONSTITUENT POWER AND POLITICAL

THEOLOGY
"All significant concepts ofthe modem theory ofthe state are secular-
ized theological concepts..." (Schmitt 1985, 37). This statement, made
in 1922, cannot be taken literally, at least as a description, in light of
Die Diktatur, published a year earlier. In that work, Schmitt based his
understanding of one of the two key conceptscommissariat dicta-
torshipdirectly on the Roman model linked to republican practice
rather than any theology. The very concept of dictatorship is Roman, of
course, and even the idea of sovereign dictatorship, if not the concept,
made its appearance in Rome in the traditional treatment ofthe decem-
vir episode, as recounted in Livy, as well as the dictatorship of Sulla (in
Latin: dictator legibus fadendis et reipublicae constituendae causa, or "dicta-
tor for the making of laws and founding the repubhc"). Schmitt's use

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of the word "all" is therefore revealing. I believe the reason to insist
on it may very well have been a normatively charged justification for
his ovwi turn to political theology, and his transformation of originally
republican concepts into theological ones.
Arguably, that turn did not yet begin in the 1921 work, which
has even been represented as a critique of sovereign dictatorship
(McCormick 1997, chap. 3). That interpretation implies a radical shift
in the 1922 Political Theology, which is hard to explain or justify. After
1922 the issue is in any case moot, and it is certainly incorrect to claim,
given the text of the 1928 work Verfassungslehre, that Schmitt could
adopt the concept of the constituent power of the people only as he
freed it from the connotations of his earlier notion of sovereign dicta-
torship (Kalyvas, 2009).^ In the Verfassungslehre, Schmitt adopted the
very concept of constituent power worked out in Die Diktatur, linked
to sovereign dictatorship, and equally important, to pohtical theology.
There is little question that Schmitt understood the historical
introduction of sovereign dictatorship in political theological terms.
The key figures in Die Diktatur were Cromwell and Rousseau, where
one is theological in the traditional sense but on the borderline of the
sovereign dictatorship already hinted at by radical Protestant thought
in England, while the other breaks vth the tradition and turns to
political theology. The appeal to divine authorization is sincere in
Cromwell, and is the clue to his quasi-monarchical sovereignfy, while
in Rousseau (following Machiavelh) religious justification proper is
only a noble lie. It is otherwise with political theology. Here in Rousseau,
according to Schmitt, "the politicization of theological concepts, espe-
cially with respect to the concept of sovereignfy, is so striking that it
has not escaped any tme expert on his writings" (Schmitt 1985, 46).
According to Die Diktatur, Rousseau's general will has godlike dignify
uniting power and justice; it is an unlimited and unhmitable legislator,
the source of the laws of the state as God is of the laws of nature; it is
undivided, and indivisible, indestructible, morally pure, incapable of
error or even of vwlling a wrong (Schmitt 1994,118-119). This is distin-
guished from the will of all, the empirical v^U and the people who can

Political Theology and Populism 145

err, and thus the whole construct is an implicit transposition of the
language of the king's two bodies (if, pace Blumenberg, not the precise
substantial stmcture!) from the monarch to the people. Both the figure
of God the father and the Christological metaphor of Kantorowicz are
present in this theologically mixed depiction. Nevertheless, the sover-
eign of Rousseau's political theology, whose vill is the General Will, is
said to surpass the theologically legitimated absolute monarch in its
legislative capacity unlimited by either a law of succession or divine
and natural law (Schmitt 1985, 36).^
Rousseau's conversion of theological to political (-theological)
omnipotence, or at least unlimited legislative power, was not, as far
as Schmitt is concerned, the final form of the political theology of the
constituent power. As he correctly noted, Rousseau does not fully unify
the will, and has a need to distinguish the authority ofthe wise lgisla-
teur, with a divine mission but vwthout power, from both the power of
the people that may not be wise and the power ofthe dictator that relies
on external authority (Schmitt 1994, 125ff.). Schmitt thought another
step was essential: the unification of dictator, lgislateur, and I would
add sovereign(ty) in a concept of sovereign dictatorship (1994, 126), a
step that he sees fully developed in Sieyes' notion ofthe pouvoir constitu-
ant (1994, 137ff.). Here all the theological motifs are restated with full
force and are even radicalized: absolute creativity, absence of limits,
priority to all organization, infallibilify, persistence. The relation ofthe
constituant to the constitu is said be exactly analogous to Spinoza's
pantheistic distinction of natura naturans and naturata with its imma-
nent rather than transcendent conception ofthe divine (1994, 139).^ The
constituant's power is an infinite, inconceivable, inexhaustible ulti-
mate foundation [Abgrund) that produces ever new forms and organs.
At the same time, however, the very unclarity ofthe vwU ofthe
people as the constituent power is interpreted theologically as express-
ing a hidden and never fully accessible divinity (1994, 142). Since the
will ofthe nation or the people is unclear, it can be misinterpreted and
distorted, and therefore it takes an agency to rightly constme it, one
that not only has the authority to interpret but has the power to impose

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as well. The role of such a church-like entity is all the more neces-
sary because the empirical people is not the ideal one, and thus needs
regeneration. As Lefort shows with respect to the Reign of Terror, this
idea is then reduced to another: "the people must be extracted from
within the people" (1988, 79). Many years before Schmitt popularized
his concept ofthe pohtical, his pohtical theology anticipated the friend
and enemy polarity, parallel (even if not identical in substance) to the
saved and the damned.^
This pohtical theology could be said to be innmanent; both friend
and enemy are worldly actors. Admittedly, there is only partial iden-
tity of substance. While the friend is identical to the ideal people, the
enemy is not identical to the empirical one that in part can be regener-
ated. But the empirical people are seen as contaminated by the enemy.
Thus, while the external enemy can be excluded even from the empiri-
cal people, the internal one represents an entirely different task.^ The
purified body of the elect is a not-yet, an absence rather than a real
presence. It cannot act and must be represented, as the visible church
represents the invisible one (Schmitt 1996). Thus the idea of a "hidden
God" appears in spite of Schmitt's repeated criticism ofthe deist pohti-
cal theology he sees in the German Staatslehre, one that he describes
derisively as a cloak and dagger drama (Schmitt 1985, 38; 1994,27,138),
assuming an entity incapable of action behind a variety of pohtical func-
tions and institutions. Yet he himself has noted the absence of a person-
alist and decision-making quality in his central concept of the people
(Schmitt 1985, 46). Where he differs from the German Staatslehre is
that, unhke Jellinek et al., he posits the need to have an entity that can
successfully identify itself with the people in order to have a popular
decision at all (1985,10, 49). That's where the biggest trouble lies.
"Extraction" and "regeneration" (and therefore proscription) as
the production of the supposedly constitution-making subject are the
highest task of sovereign dictatorship in Schmitt's original interpre-
tation, higher than even the production of the constitution. As I will
show below, this idea vwll be taken over by Emesto Laclau. In Schmitt's
case dictatorship is still in the name ofthe tme sovereign, or rather its

Political Theology and Populisnn 147

placeholder, the pouvoir constituant. In appearance it is commissioned
by the people. There is not, however, nor can there be, an actual act
of commissioning by the ideal body of the people, whose general will
is identified not as the fallible will of all but as one that cannot err.
This vdll must be represented, empirically speaking, by the vill of a
minority or even of one man! (Schmitt 1994, 120). If there is commis-
sioning or authorization, it comes close to self-commissioning or self-
authorization. The empirical people is either not a person, unlike the
monarch, with a will (Schmitt 1985, 48-49), or, less likely, has a will
that only corresponds to that of the monarch's natural body that could
be in error. This is perhaps why the pouvoir constituant of the people
is not initially identified with sovereignty as such, implying that the
ideal unity is not a person with a will. Its sovereignty is at best latent,
and its powers are given to, or rather taken by, the sovereign dicta-
tor. While the pouvoir constituant and sovereign dictator may not be
omnipotent, they are both unlimited and unhmitable (with the differ-
ence between omnipotence and being unlimited understood as the
difference between theology and poHtical theology, or between superfi-
cial and serious poHtical theology).
Thus, in sovereign dictatorship uniquely, and (I think) absurdly,
dictatorship is exercised also over the entity that supposedly commis-
sions it and is the source of its legitimacy (Schmitt 1994, xix; Lefort 1988,
79). How much difference does it make that this is supposed to be only
dictatorship, not sovereignty itself? The temporal limitation Schmitt
implies may turn out to be illusory, as already in France in 1793 and
then in Russia in 1918. It is true, with the regeneration of the people as
expressed legally speaking by the full enactment of a constitution, even
sovereign dictatorship is supposed to come to an end. Here, however,
the classical concept of dictatorship is under strain because regenera-
tion may be time-consuming, and who is to say when it is completed?
Even the enactment of a constitution, as in 1793, need not mean full
regeneration, since the emergency definition of the gouvernement revo-
luUonaire as in place "till the peace" refers to both the extemal and the
internal enemy. The difficulty is even more clearly illustrated by the

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example ofthe dictatorship ofthe proletariat, which has no strict time
hmits in any Marxian version. Even this motif, I should add, is theologi-
cal, with the sovereign dictatorship exercised by a quasi-church waiting
for "the end of time."
The two Schmittian works that treat the constituent power are
not fundamentally different in their conception. First, in both texts
the theory of constituent power is understood as secularization of the
notion of God as the "potestas constituens" (Schmitt 1993, 77). Yet, well
before Blumenberg, both texts comprehend that pohtical theology is
not simply theology, since the people can neither fully replace God
nor possess the ability to alone create a constitution, nor is a constitu-
tion the whole of social life. And second, because here, as elsewhere
(1988), Schmitt sees no tension or fundamental contradiction between
dictatorship and democracy, and it is even stated that dictatorship is
possible only on democratic foundations (1993, 236-237) in distinction
to the repubhcan but hardly democratic earher theory ofthe commis-
sarial dictatorship.
The key here, obviously, is an understanding of democracy in
plebiscitary terms as a fundamentally public possibility of acclama-
tion. But most important, third, because the newer conception of
constituent power is such that all the elements are still there that
require dictatorship: the friend and enemy conception of the politi-
cal requiring "the extraction of the people from the people," the
unclarity ofthe will, the disorganization of its agent, the possibility of
error and falsification on the one hand, and the indivisibility, purity,
creativity, incapability of error ofthe people's ideal body on the other.
I would even say finally that the need for a disguise for a fundamen-
tally authoritarian politics was there in both texts. Originally this
need was answered by the Roman concept of dictatorship, but in spite
of Schmitt's notable and sophisticated scholarly effort this remained
suspicious because of his ovra. new concept of sovereign dictatorship,
as well as the stubborn, more modem meaning ofthe same term as a
permanent regime that Schmitt was in any case closer to conceding
in Verfassungslehre (Neumann 1957; Arato 2012). There, the theologi-

Political Theology and Populism 149

cally constmcted democratic language replacing the republican is the
main answer to the need for disguise. (That it is a disguise still can be
shown in the very terms of Schmitt's own theory, his discussion of
representation and government. In all states there must be some who
can say I'e'tat c'est nous [Schmitt 1993, 207].)

POLITICAL THEOLOGY AS A LADDER TO THE POLITICAL

Political theology generally accomplishes the move from the king to
the people vdthin a two-bodies doctrine. In the case of monarchy, the
doctrine was developed primarily in a constitutionalist, or at least anti-
absolutist direction, through the postulate of an abstract body tran-
scending the vwU of an individual man, namely the king. Transferring
the model to the people, its immediate implications are, however,
anti-democratic. As the distinction between general will and will of all
shows, the point here is to devalue and abstract from what the popula-
tion actually and empirically wants to the benefit of another will. To
Claude Lefort, this fransference is accomplished by "the fantasmagoria
of popular power," contemporaneous with but in contradiction to the
invention of democratic pohtics in modern revolutions.
In no other author does the two-body scheme taken from
Kantorowicz play a more important role than in the work of Lefort.
This should not be understood as Lefort's clinging to a medieval form of
thought, to a pohtical theology. In Lefort's instance, the effort produced
not a political theology but a process of learning from it that goes
beyond its limits; "rather than seeing democracy as a new episode in the
transfer of the religious into the political, should we not conclude .. .
that the theological and the political became divorced" (Lefort 1988,
255). For Lefort, political theology is a ladder to use and to leave behind.
It is neither an instrument either to disguise or justify domination as
alternately for Schmitt, nor the ever-present condition of possibilify
of liberal democracy. The key here is the insistence on the symbolic
dimension, and the idea of the empfy space of (symbolic) power that
pohtical theology helps to discover, but under democratic regimes also
to misconstrue. The insights nevertheless gained can be abandoned in

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 a democracy only at the cost of authoritarian populism (if the space
is filled), or worse: totalitarian reincarnation (if the spatial position is
entirely obliterated).^ The scheme is one of a no longer theological dual-
ism; in other words, it is the affirmation of transcendence without a
transcending entify that could be imagined as a body.
Political theology is first relied on by Lefort to show that histori-
cally the model of what he calls political science cannot account for
the workings of power that require symbolic projections of legitimacy.
Without this level politics may be possible, but not the understanding of
the political defined as the activity and interpretation that estabhsh and
reproduce the most fundamental institutions of sociefy. These institu-
tions are founded in never fully accessible metanormative stmctures
deep-seated, unconscious assumptions that without being normative
themselves determine the meaning of tmth, justice, law within a social-
political order as a whole. For Lefort, this idea of the political, very
different than Schmitt's friend-enemy polarity, is the key to different
political forms or regimes. Lefort consistently maintains throughout
that pure immanence, in other words a purely human world or even
society, is ontologically and historically impossible (Lefort 1988, 229,
254). The two-bodies metaphor is important to him in order to estab-
lish the space where counterfactual norms or symbolic metanorms that
transcend the real could be located vwthin a political model of legiti-
macy, initially a poUtical theology. Even the v^dll of a sacerdotal monarch
thereby comes under what this will ought to be, in other words, under
law. In the case of kingship, for the efficacy of the symbohc, both the
identification of the symbol vwth a body and their constitutive differ-
ence are important. The king can represent unity both because he
stands for much more than simply a concrete human body and because
he is also a human body. As the figure of Christ he mediates, in other
words, between the bodily and the symbolic, though as Blumenberg
would stress, for a different, more immanent end. Lefort is above all
concerned with the survival of the modality of thinking that we have
. already seen in Schmitt: the replacement of king by the people's two
bodies (Morgan 1988; Pasquino 2004). Here he notices, however, that

Political Theology and Populisnn 151

the lack of an identifiable unitary body as in the case of the king can
lead in the opposite direction: the search for a new embodiment.
Lefort's analysis of Jules Michelet in particular shows that in the
case of the people as well as the king it was possible to postulate both
symbolic embodiment and physical incarnationthus the symbolic
meaning as well as the presence of the symbol but without the full
identity of these dimensions. The empirical people are again seen, as
in Rousseau, as fallible and open to manipulation, here also open to
demagogy and capable of senseless violence. Yet "the people" are seen
as a subject and an actor in the streets and assemblies of Paris, moving
the revolutionary process forward with intense energy. To Lefort this
construct represents adding yet another figure to the duahsms recon-
stmcted by Kantorowicz, preserving a partially overlapping theologi-
cal structure. It is Michelet who chngs to a medieval figure of thought.
According to Lefort, in spite of Michelet's attacks on the theologians
of politics, both monarchical and popular, his conception is a political
theology. But he explicitly does not stay with Michelet and the people's
two bodies. Lefort speaks of the obvious weakness of Michelet's argu-
ment that starts with but is not restricted to an "outrageous simphfica-
tion of Christianity." It is that very simplification that helps to produce
the mistaken impression that democracy involves a mere repetition of
historical forms (Lefort 1988, 248).
Lefort, while learning from the genealogy of the two bodies,
insists that democracy represents a fundamental break v^th it (1988,
255). The gap between symbolic and the real is now much greater and
can no longer be mediated by a single subject with two bodies. The
transcendent space is still there, but it cannot be occupied as long
as democracy survives. This means two things: first, that there is no
democracy without S5mibolic reference, one that cannot be reduced,
as in the realistic theory, to the concrete description of its workings.
The lessons learned from religion and political theology should not
be forgotten. It also means, second, that instead of replacing God with
people, the theological notion ofthe people must be abandoned alto-
gether. We have to break with all political theology.

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 The key to the last step is Lefort's analysis of the concept of the
people in the French Revolution (see the 1980 essay "Interpreting
Revolution in the French Revolution" in Lefort [1988], which relied
on Francois Furet's [1978] Interpreting the French Revolution). "No more
God-People" he exclaims, twice quoting Edgar Quinet (Lefort 1988,
134). Lefort, while not entirely consistent in his usage, sees the people
and popular sovereignty as paradoxical: in the moment of their emer-
gence they either lose their identity and become anon5mious or dissolve
in mere number and more importantly division (1988, 227, 230-232).
Given an only "latent" identity as well as empirical multiplicity and
multiple dimensions as a subject or subjects, the people can be defined
only in a "juridical constmction" (1988, 230). By juridical I think he
means more than the legal equality of the members of democratic soci-
ety, but also various more active possibilities: the people as the majority
of an election according to various mies, or a referendum or any other
participatory process procedurally provided for, including the diffuse
processes of the public sphere that also must be legally constituted.
As he has argued in several pieces deahng with the French Revolution,
to insist on the people as the (pre-legal, pre-constitutional) subject of
revolutionary poHtics leads to absurd paradoxes we have seen in Schmitt,
like the idea of "the extraction of the people from the people," or the
project of the regeneration of the agent that is the very source of the
authority of this operation, its ovra midwife (see Lefort's [1988] "The
Revolutionary Terror" as well as "Interpreting the Revolution within
the French Revolution"). Or, "the people ask their delegation to give
birth to them but the delegation is part of the people." Lefort caUs this
idea "triply absurd" because it presupposes that the operation is needed
because the people are cmshed, yet able to delegate and imagine a ftee-
dom that they have never experienced (1988, 70).
It could be said that "the people" in its very indeterminacy and
latency as well as divisions means "the empty space," but Lefort's own
analysis shows that it is difficult to restrict it to this merely negative
meaning. Nor is it easy to replace normative foundations by an ontolog-
ical conception of the symbolic. While the difference is subtle, Lefort

Political Theology and Populism 153

does not simply restate the formulation ofthe German Staatslehre and
Carre de Malberg of popular sovereignty as national, as merely another
sjmtibohcally elevated face ofthe state where the people or the nation
appear as hidden God incapable of any embodiment by any political
organ. For Lefort, foUovdng Furet, while the space is empty, in the
revolution at least there was a continual stmggle to occupy it. Edmund
Morgan (1988) has documented the same process for the English and
American Revolutions. According to Lefort, it becomes impossible to
say "which group, which assembly, which meeting, which consensus
was the trustee ofthe people's word." At the moment when the exis-
tence of a new legitimate power is declared, fully united and self-identi-
cal, it becomes impossible to identify it. Yet the attempt is made, made
possible by assertions of identity and unity. The failure of each claimant
and the revolutionary terror directed at all of them is testimony that
all such claims can only be usurpations in a democracy.^ I think Lefort
is forced to admit this struggle not only on historical grounds but also
because he is not satisfied with a purely negative principle of legiti-
macy that would make modern democracy too precarious. Thus his
rejection ofthe notion of popular sovereignty is equivocal. Yet it is this
very semantics that produces the conflicts with and within the demo-
cratic principle as he has defined it. Emptiness is in itself not a norma-
tive desideratum, and popular sovereignty on the face of it implies a
stronger normative figure: the rule ofthe whole people only by itself
Lefort, I think, neglects the question of democratic legitimacy
because to him it is the symbolic that on a deeper level determines
which t5T)e of legitimacy is possible at all for a given regime. He puts
the idea of popular sovereignty in doubt v^rithout seeking to replace it.
The empty space of power means the symbolic estabhshment of divi-
sion and contestation rather than unity and absence of conflict. As the
key to the integration of democratic politics, it is defined above all by a
discourse of a power that belongs to or is embodied by no one, and that
defines the exercise of power as a periodic contest (Lefort 1988, 226).
This symbohc stmcture leads to a scheme of plural legitimating possi-
bilities rather than the monistic scheme of popuhsm based on popular

154 social research

sovereignfy and identification. But he knows that only institutionaliza-
tion allows the distinction of the democratic contest for power, from
the use of violence on behalf of as well as against attempted usurpa-
tion. Is such institutionahzation possible without some at least implicit
consensus on legitimacy?
Division and conflict as ultimate principles no longer belong to
political theology. Beyond the still-theological dualism of ideal unify
and empirical division, Lefort's proposal involves an ideal framing of
conflict, where pluralify rather than even dualify is the fundamental
principle. This step can occur only with the defeat of the revolution-
ary imaginary in processes of transformation and institutionahzation
(Arato 2012a). As against a certain Schmittian interpretation of Lefort,
I would argue that this notion is not incompatible vdth the ideas of
Rawls and Habermas. Conflict has to be institutionahzed if it is not to
mean dualistic friend-enemy relations or a pluralistic war of all against
all, which, given the notion of popular sovereignfy in the French
Revolution, led to the Terror. Each seeing itself as "the people" sought
to eradicate all others defined as "the enemy," whatever the appear-
ances. To avoid such a logic requires fundamental rights and the separa-
tion of powers, as Lefort repeatedly states, and not only de facto social
plurahsm. But the model also presupposes a constitutionahst constitu-
tion, though not necessarily a written one. It requires a constitution
having at least a minimal S5mibolic consensus, in any case more than
a mere modus vivendi that may be the way it is first established after
revolutionary struggles, for example, or preempting these, but remain-
ing contingent on given constellations of power. The constitution
presupposes and seeks to conserve social diversify rather than aiming
at unify and unification.
As to popular sovereignfy, if one still wishes to retain the idea
of bodies, then it must be the multiple (Walker 2007) rather than two
or even three bodies* of "the" people. It must involve the legalization
of each supposed body. But the survival of the definitive article "the"
even here indicates the danger that a temporary incarnation express-
ing one valid perspective will be propagated and accepted as the only

Political Theology and Populism 155

valid one. Even if Lefort is right that the claim itself is not a problem,
claims and counterclaims of this tj^je, if taken sufficiently seriously,
each claiming to be judge in its own cause, can be adjudicated only by
violence. Thus it may be best to go beyond incarnation altogether, as
Lefort and Habermas both repeatedly suggest,^ and replace the idea of
popular sovereignfy with that of democracy that can be defined only in
procedural terms, the notion ofthe people in the singular by a model of
plurahstic legitimation. Such a model would have learned from pohti-
cal theology the importance ofthe political vwthout replacing one theo-
logical scheme with another.

POPULISM AS DISGUISED POLITICAL THEOLOGY

There is little question that Schmitt, both an analyst and adept of pohti-
cal theology, is partially right: sovereignfy and the constituent power
are commonly used as political theological concepts. But he neglects
the possibilify that these now secular concepts can be further secular-
ized and thereby de-theologized.^ The theory of populism of Ernesto
Laclau heads precisely the opposite direction. Taking a political cate-
gory, namely, "populism," which despite its well-known ambiguities
and multiplicify of forms describes a shifting set of very real and very
stubborn empirical phenomena, he theologizes it and strongly affirms
the theological stmcture he secretly introduces. This can be shown
precisely in relation to Schmitt's pohtical theology, which Laclau either
assumes, without a single citation, or rediscovers in his desire to justify
and disguise his ovra version of authoritarian politics. The "frontier of
antagonism" of Laclau is Schmitt's friend-enemy conception of pohtics.
The stress on symbolic representation is a return to Schmitt. Above
all, Laclau's populism involves the extrication ofthe people from the
empirical people by an evidently plebescitarian form of leadership.
This conception is also squarely rooted in the theological two-bodies
conception, one that is explicitly affirmed (Laclau 2005,170)."
As against the unmentioned Schmitt, Laclau seems to be relying
only on Lefort's idea of the people's two bodies, traced by the latter

156 social research

to authors such as Michelet. But contrary to Lefort, Laclau refuses to
leave this constmct behind. While the two-bodies conception applied
to the people represents to Lefort only a ladder that must be thrown
away once fully ascended, Laclau formulates his model of populism
exactly in these in terms. Thus in spite of important points of contact,
Laclau reverses Lefort's emphasis precisely on the question of politi-
cal theology.
The positive link with Lefort is not the trivial one having to do
vwth equahty and equalization mentioned by Laclau (2005,165). In fact
the notion of the political (le politique) as the activity that consciously aims
at the institution of society, constantly redefining it, is inherited from
Lefort (and vwth a slightly different terminology, from the more radi-
cal, revolutionary version of Comehus Castoriadis). Like Lefort, Laclau
has little theoretical interest in pohtics (lapolitique), which he identifies
with social action (ultimately defined as mle-following or acting vwthin
unchallenged mies) or what he refers to as merely institutional action.
The political, on the other hand, is seen as foundational and creative.
But, and this is a big but, Laclau identifies the pohtical with popuhsm
(2005, 99; 117; 222; 231-232) even if occasionally and inconsistently
populism appears as only one of its forms.^^ It is in this context that
Lefort is attacked for tending to identify populism with totalitarianism
and both v^th the obliteration ofthe political. Note, however, that popu-
lism is not mentioned by the cited Lefort text, and it is Laclau himself
who rightly apphes to popuhsm some ofthe features of Lefort's totah-
tarianism: "power is embodied in a group . . . in a single individual...
the development of the fantasy of the People-as-One etc" (2005,
165-166).
Laclau is undoubtedly right: popuhsm and totahtarianism should
not be conflated even if there are "totalitarian" forms of populism.
Lefort's concepts allow us to make the distinction between occupy-
ing the empty place of symbolic power and obliterating the distance
between the symbolic and the real. Totalitarianism does both, while
populism only the former. But Laclau is also right to suspect that for

Political Theology and Populism 157

Lefort the populist move in itself represents a threat to democracy.^^ It
is on this point he wishes to refute Lefort.
And it is not only a question here of populist inclusion that
can have the democratic effect of broadening the community of "citi-
zenship," the achievement of a democratic result by nondemocratic
means. Laclau wishes to treat the means itself as a fundamentally
democratic one in the sense of the constmction of popular subjects.
But this move represents insistence on the concept of popular sover-
eignty, which Lefort subjected to serious critique, rather than democ-
racy. It is meaningless to say that democracy need not be understood
as a form of regime. More deeply, Laclau abandons the definition of
Lefort concerning democracy as the emptiness of the place of power
and the process of institutionally securing its emptiness. The politi-
cal space can be and even must be filled, at least "partially" (what-
ever that means), and emptiness reappears only on the ideological
level as the "empty signifier" that only superficiallyon the level of
namingkeeps something of Lefort's conception. The empty signi-
fier's stress is on unity rather than plurality. In all versions it refers
to the unification of heterogeneous demands around admittedly
vague, symbolic contents that obliquely refer to a Utopian condition
of total social unity, homogeneity, and reconciliation. Such contents
can be an idea like justice or equality, or a person like Georges
Boulanger or Juan Pern, but in all cases they must be carried and
promoted by a partial social reference group, "the plebs" or the
"underdog," that identifies itself with "the people as a whole," the
populus.
The concept of a part that represents the whole is inherited ftom
the Marx of 1843 ("Critque of Hegel's Philosophy of Right"), who most
likely was reflecting on and radicalizing the conception of the Abb
Sieyes in "What Is the Third Estate." But in Laclau it is no longer the
logic of history that will turn the exclusion of "the plebs" or of the
"underdog" into the representative of the people as a whole. In effect,
the altemative concept of democracy we get is one of the empowerment

158 social research

of a weakly identified subsection of the population through rhetori-
cal devices bereft of rationality. Moreover, given the likely heterogene-
ity (at times confused with mere difference) even of the partial group,
unification by an abstract Utopian reference is depicted as insufficient.
An empty signifier is a reference point, a name that constitutes reality
but is not an agent or a subject capable of decision and action. Thus
even when a populist movement is not immediately identified v\rith the
empty signifier of a leader's name (as in "Peronism"), leadership seems
essential (Laclau 2005, 99-100). (The basically leaderless US version of
populism, therefore, does not fit into Laclau's theory even though he
refers to it as a case.) Here we have an example of double embodiment,
or the application of the king's two bodies to the ideal bodyredou-
bhng it and bringing it back to a physical incamation. While the partial
group embodies the whole, the leader embodies the partial group, with
a three-bodies conception as the result.
Clearly, Laclau explicitly rejects Lefort's ban against embodi-
ment. The king's two bodies continue to operate in democratic societ-
ies, but now in terms of a trinitarian scheme: the leader, the extracted
groups, and the universal reference that is an empty name (Laclau
2005, 170).^'' He does not understand embodiment only as an empiri-
cal phenomenon caused by the inability to identify the people or the
pueblo, "a profoundly vague" concept (de la Torre 2010, 78, 139, 207).
For him embodiment in leadership is the highly desirable constitution
of a popular subject that otherwise would fall back into mere differ-
ence.^^ Why the filhng ofthe empty space by leadership in this concep-
tion is said to be only partial remains unclear. Laclau does not have
in mind the highly precarious and inevitably temporary nature of
empirical attempts to embody, which remain open to critique precisely
in the name of democracy. This was a logic described by Furet, Lefort,
and Morgan, consistent with the concept of emptiness. The emptiness
of the democratic space, reproduced by institutions and discourses,
is deeply inhospitable to all and any efforts at embodiment. Laclau,
however, unlike Morgan, is not only an analyst of the fictional use of

Political Theology and Populism 159

the concept of the people; he is an advocate of the fiction and of the
political constmction of fictions.
As this conception is developed, the model of the political is
contaminated. The process of "the extraction of the people" is incom-
patible even v^dth the process of inclusion stressed by all ideologists of
populism. Some are included, while others are immediately excluded,
and worse. What Laclau constmcts as equivalence among those who
are different and even heterogeneous is possible only if a radical
"frontier of antagonism" is constmcted within sociefy. Equivalence
is attained only in common opposition to those who would deny
otherwise heterogenous demands. The political as the foundational
is replaced by the idea of friend-enemy relations. The vagueness of
the ideology is compensated for by the intensify of antagonism. The
absence of real identify is made up for by affective, libidinal ties,
"love" for the leader and love for all those whom the leader suppos-
edly loves (2005, 53-56, 82-83).
The conception is Schmittian also in its reliance on Hobbes.
As sociology from Durkheim to Parsons has been pained to point
out, Hobbesian atomism excludes the notion of the social. The social
is absent in Laclau as well. Atomized individuals (even if replaced by
atomized "demands") are only united pohtically. Referring to Hobbes,
Laclau's notion of leadership has exactly this function, even if he
supplements the Hobbesian sword (Laclau 2005, 88, 100) with what he
presents as Freudian love. This can be seen most clearly through his
notion of representation. After calling Hannah Pitkin's "still the best
theoretical treatment of the notion of representation," he proceeds
(2005, 159) to reduce her complex, fivefold theory of representation
to one of its dimensions primarily, namely sjmibolic representation,
reinforced by an element of Hobbesian "authorization view." It is thus
that he cites the notion that a dictator can be as good as or a better
representative than an elected member of parliament because of his
emotional, that is, charismatic, powers (Pitkin 1967). As he knows, this
was hardly Pitkin's final word on the subject, and indicated rather her

160 social research

critique of the reduction to symbolic representation. This critique is
exphcitly rejected by Laclau who, in spite of a lame attempt to repeat
Pitkin's view of fascism as "the extreme form of S5mnbolic representa-
tion," in fact returns to precisely Schmitt's protofascist understand-
ing, derived from both the symbolic and institutional practice of the
Catholic Church, derisively juxtaposed to mere interest representa-
tion, or Vertretung. The idea is that of a symbol or an official symboli-
cally incorporating an absence, the cross for Christ, or the pope for
the Church's ideal body. When reinforced by the Hobbesian absolute
authorization, this position combines unlimited power of the "repre-
sentative" with the emotional attachment ofthe represented.
Laclau rejects Pitkin's idea that an empirical case of representa-
tion can be judged according to normative criteria (whether there are
good reasons for accepting a given leader), and produces the purely
Hobbesian counterargument that the criteria can be formed only within
and by representation and never outside of it (Laclau 2005,161).^^ This
argument, however, is false for any but the most closed and least differ-
entiated societies. Given Laclau's denial of asking normative and criti-
cal questions concerning the validify of a form of representation, it is
futile and self-contradictory that he impHes the existence of a spectrum
of possibilities between purely top-down and purely bottom-up forms
of representationthat representation is a two-sided phenomenon.
The point is right, but he has no way to judge any option within this
scheme preferable to any other, especially as he abandoned Pitkin's
other forms of representation. With the assumption of Hobbesian
"radical disorder" or radical heterogeneify, order and homogenization
can only move from the representative to the represented. Since the
latter's very identify and unify is said to be constituted by representa-
tion, the idea of a two-way movement is a subterfuge. A reverse move-
ment from the represented to the representative could only be satisfied
by missing links such as accountabilify whether electoral or judicial,
or similitude, or public pressure and influence, and most radically by
direct democratic devices such as imperative mandate and recall. All

Political Theology and Populism 161

such mediationswell discussed by Pitkinare missing if not in all
populist movements, certainly in Laclau following the paths of Hobbes
and Schmitt.
Hobbes is Laclau's key not only forward to Schmitt, but also back
to Lenin in the most voluntaristic version. He abandons not only the
Marxian notion of class, as he should, but any plausible sociological
alternatives (whether stratum, group, association, corporate entity,
movement) seen as concepts with a content juxtaposed to empty but
constitutive names. Thus we are left vth what Merleau-Ponty called
"ultrabolshevism" in reference to the early Sartre (Merleau-Ponty
1973)." Sartre in the 1950s argued in light of what he took to be the
empirical situation ofthe working class that only the party can produce
unity and universality where there is empirically only heterogeneity
and particularism, a heap of dust particles or of sand, separated rather
than unified by primitive need (Sartre 1969, 216). Reproducing the
Hobbesian argument that Laclau too would use, Sartre argued that the
least division vdthin the organ that unifies would reproduce the disper-
sion. The sphtting up ofthe proletariat would mean the "breaking apart
of popular sovereignty" (1969, 228). Thus leadership becomes essential,
logically that of ultimately one person, leadership that according to
Sartre must incarnate the unity of the group that is an unattainable
ideal even with the suppression of dissent and minorities he sees as
essential (1969, 216-217, 222-223). Collective consciousness is impos-
sible as "group mind"; to exist it must necessarily be incarnated in
leadership. Leaders are dictatorial because the group has supposedly
chosen them to exercise dictatorship over each member.
As Sartre had a real point against orthodox Marxism's economis-
tic or historical deterministic or even neo-Hegelian derivations of the
unity and consciousness ofthe proletariat, Laclau has one against Slavoj
Zizek and Antonio Negri as well. A political theology of immanence
based on a Hegelian identical subject-object or a Spinozian agency
(proletariat or multitude) has no plausibility anjmiore, whether socio-
logical or pohtical. Laclau is right in suspecting that the invocations of

162 social research

 the proletariat or the multitude are not based on any coherent sociol-
ogy of groups and movements. But the answer, to constitute exactly
the same type of actor now called "the people," a historical subject,
entirely voluntaristically by uttering a name, as in magic, and embody-
ing that name in a leader with emotional ties to the masses, is only
somewhat less implausible and is definitely more dangerous.^* It is in
any case a political theology. More important, pohtically, the construct
reeks of manipulation, what Rosa Luxemburg as well as the young
Trotsky strongly criticized as "substitutionism," radicalized in Sartre's
"ultrabolshevism" of a certain period (Luxemburg 1904; Trotsky 1904).
In 1904 Trotsky already accurately foretold the Hkely result: one-person
dictatorship. It does not help that contra Hobbes, the unification by
the leader in Laclau's version is supposed to be linked to the consti-
tution of a revolutionary subject of action rather than final outcome,
namely "actual mling" or regime. Here Lenin was more consistent and
ftankly admitted that the point of constituting a poHtical vanguard was
to estabhsh a dictatorship (whether first the "democratic dictatorship"
of workers and peasants or later the party). At least, he believed that
there was a logic in history that would make such a regime eventu-
ally obsolete along with the state. Laclau neither shares the optimism
nor tells us why the elective affinity between dictatorial movement and
dictatorship as regime should not be seen as very strong, even if the
linkage is said to be not "automatic" (Laclau 2005,100).
How do we sell such ultrabolshevism today,^^ in an age when
dictatorship seems to be fully discredited? You certainly cannot do so in
terms of the language inherited ftom Lacan, Hke the concepts of objet
petit a and mother's milk, which seem to me unnecessary even to Laclau's
conception. These are, politically speaking, only curiosities that most
readers will quickly forget. It is otherwise with the language of political
theology, with deep roots in some versions of Marxism, and capable of
mobilizing strong religious-type sentiments. It is indeed striking that
religious movements and mobilizations do not already play a signifi-
cant role in Laclau's conception, though they would eminently qual-

Political Theology and Populism 163

ify at least as long as carried by subaltern agents. Political theology,
however, treats all movements it focuses on as religious. There is more-
over not a critical word concerning political religion in Laclau's text,
and the political theologists he criticizes, mainly Zizek and Negri, are
attacked only because they have the wrong political theology, based
on immanence rather than transcendence (2005, 239 ff.; 242 ff.). It is
their followers along with other leftists who are the main target of
a work whose language evidently does not seek to speak to populist
movements and their potential participants: the addressees are intel-
lectuals who are open to the secularized religious character of (some)
movements, and who are invited to give up one pohtical theology for
another.
That Laclau's political theology is of the transcendent type is
already indicated by his revival of the king's two-bodies metaphor.
The old image drawn from Abb Sieyes and Benjamin Constant, and
repeated by Hannah Arendt and Lefort, that absolutism put the king in
the place of God and the revolution similarly replaced the king by the
people, is repeated here, but this time with a positive evaluation. The
people as a whole is a transcendent God, it is never present or visible in
its full universahty and completion. It is an absent or a hidden God, "an
absent fullness" (Laclau 2005, 85). It does not matter a whole lot that
this is seen as failed or non-full-fledged transcendence (2005, 244) since
Laclau assumes Kantorowicz's Christological metaphor: that which is
absent is and must be made present by incamation. The people's three
bodies are present as different levels of embodiment. The plebs and
the leader are representative symbols that make present the "fullness"
that must remain transcendent. "The fullness of communitarian being
is very much present for them as that which is absent" (2005, 94, 223).
It is in and by the name ofthe transcendent that the levels of incama-
tion are constituted, but only through incamation can constitution by
a name be successful. The ontological argument for the existence of
God is reinvented in a nominalist form, "the people" is a name whose
uttering estabhshes its reality (2005, 105-106 ff., 108). For this reality

164 social research

to be active, however, mediations are needed, and this is possible only
through representative symbols that produce affective identification
with bodies that can act. The invisible Church must be embodied in the
visible one.
Act to do what? In this conception populism, as already stated,
shares the logic of the pohtical, or rather is that logic, and consists in
confronting and challenging the estabhshed institution of sociefy. This,
however, is a critical but not yet theological function. The step to theo-
logical expectation, already contained in Marxian theories of revolution
as shown by Karl Loevdth, hes in the notion of a transcendent place,
a new ordering of the social realm. "The fullness of the communify
is merely the imaginary reverse of a situation lived as dejicient being"
(Laclau 2005, 86). What Laclau shares with his foremnners is the idea
of this pohtical franscendence as a mpture with all previous orderings.
Where he departs from them is the frankly assumed sociological empti-
ness of the notion, and the rather Kantian idea that franscendence can
never be achieved; "a just sociefy... exists only ideally" (2005, 94). The
goal is nothing, the movement is eveiything, even if Laclau would not
appreciate the reference to Eduard Bernstein. That there is no concrete
political project here (unlike in the case of Bernstein) is certainly not
due to Laclau's inabilify to conceive of one, but to the ideological
heterogeneify of populisms, as well as the sociological heterogeneify
of each popuhst movement dravidng on incompatible demands that can
never be reconciled in his ov^m presentation.
The vagueness of popuhst ideologies is one result, one that Laclau
affirms without declaring his allegiance to any of them. The easy possi-
bihfy of moving from one populism to another is explicitly admitted by
Laclau's theory of the Joating signifier (2005, 88,129-138). This concep-
tion shows that on Laclau's grounds it is impossible to normatively
distinguish among different popuhst movements as long as, I suppose,
they organize the underdog. From the point of view of any of them, the
only defense against "fioang" is rhetorical and emotional success. The
very vagueness of the empfy signifier, of a mere name, means scant

Political Theology and Populism 165

mobilizing power without being embodied in groups and leaders with
whom affective, rhetorically produced ties can replace the missing
rationalify. This is all the more important when key segments of the
movement discover (as he is forced to admit) that their interests cannot
be represented, that their demands must be suppressed.

CONCLUSION
Religion in politics can play different and even contrary roles. It can
serve authoritarian repression but also causes of liberation (Casanova
1994). Even the secular state needed the help of religion to be first insti-
tuted in North America (Witte 1999). With pohtical theology we face a
potentially more dangerous enemy of freedom. It would be an exagger-
ation to claim that all modem pohtical theology serves and disguises
authoritarian politics. Margaret Canovan's sophisticated analysis ofthe
concept ofthe people, which ends vwth a surprising rehabihtation of
myth and a frankly poUtical theological appeal to faith and redemption
in "secular" politics, receives its inspiration from Arendt rather than
Schmitt, from council communism rather than Lenin (Canovan 2005,
137-138). Her theology is that ofthe miraculous mptures of freedom
for which the admiring analyst can only wait, in hopeful expectation.
Not only is there no way to facilitate or engineer these revolutionary or
quasi-revolutionary breaks in the continuum of institutional time but
there is little hope in their permanent institutionalization or overcom-
ing the straitjacket of normal politics. (While the conception is influ-
enced by Arendt, who was no political theologian and did not beheve in
any myth ofthe people, it can be traced back to Walter Benjamin who
was one.)
The best that can be done from this posture is to recommend a
normalization of the role of the extraordinary in an ultimately proce-
dural model, such as Bmce Ackerman's (Canovan 2005, 118-121). But
when one totally rejects even this version of proceduralism and opts
for an interventionist pohtical posture, as do Schmitt and Laclau, the
authoritarian consequences of political theology may be unavoidable.

166 social research

intended or not. To put a human actor hke "the class" or "the people"
or "the leader" in the place formerly occupied by theological or reli-
gious categories like "God" or "Christ" or "pope" means not only to
endow the former with the quality of sacredness but to attribute to
them supernatural traits that the empirical referent cannot sustain.
In the face of such constmcts the dehumanization of the inevitable
enemies follows, along with the need to extricate the genuine agent
from its empirical forms. Not only external but intemal enemies follow
from the conception, one that entails authoritarian suppression. Not
only the leader and his or her group but the analyst participates in that
suppression, at the very least by giving tools and useful disguises to a
power that can never succeed if forced to act merely in its own name.
Pohtical theology, at least the type represented by Schmitt and Laclau,
is what Machiavelli's Prince was wrongly assumed to be: justification of
dictatorship.^"

NOTES
1. The term "sovereign dictatorship" and the emphasis ofthe dictato-
rial pattem of constitution making do return in Verfassungslehre even
if now less frequently, given the change of topics. (Schmitt 1993,
59-60).
2. This is still called omnipotence in Political Theology I (Schmitt 2002,43)
but to be replaced already in that work by a theology ofthe miracle,
understood as the exception.
3. This formulation is slightly altered in Verfassungslehre (Schmitt
1993, 79).
4. He has made this point himself in the Concept ofthe Political, after again
denouncing the "superficial poMcal theology" ofthe omnipotence
ofthe state (Schmitt 2002, 42-13). Also see Political Theology I, where
he presented the theological conception of universal guilt, impl5ng
the division [Einteilung] ofthe saved and the damned, a model for the
friend enemy concept ofthe political (2002, 63-64).
5. In Concept ofthe Political this idea is maintained in terms ofthe declara-

Political Theology and Populism 167

 on and proscription of the intemal enemy (Schmitt 2002,46-47).
6. I agree with Laclau that Lefort tended at times to operate with the
rigid altemative of democracy and totaHtarianism, leaving no room
for anything in between. On this see below.
7. Thus Lefort, I think mistakenly and in a contradictory fashion, at
times sees the reign of terror as ultimately democratic (Flyim 2005,
138; 244-245) because it is directed at keeping the place of power
empty, as against usurpations. But he equally says that the logic
of the terror springs ftom the need to extract "the people" ftom
the people (Fljmn 2005, 135) that highlights the authoritarian
dimension.
8. The two-bodies conception becomes a three-bodies conception when
the representation of the ideal segment of the people, "the plebs" or
"underdog" in Laclau (2005a), becomes a problem to the representa-
tion of the people as a whole.
9. For one ofthe many places in Lefort see "Permanence of the Theologico-
PoHcal?" (Lefort 1988, 255). For Habermas see "Popular Sovereignty
as Procedure" (Habermas 1996), where what is left ftom popular sover-
eignty is only decentered and temporally disaggregated, multiple
procedures of largely informal democratic communication. Its formal
preconditions are fundamental rights, and its organizational bases are
the associations of civu society. Habermas repeatedly rejects the idea
that popular sovereignty should refer to a collective body, or vwll or
even a subject of any kind (1996, 472-3; 486-7). His commimicative,
de-substantiaHzed translation of "the people" is convincing, but it is
unclear why this should be called sovereignty at all.
10. Such further secularization in the dimension of the constituent power
is the aim of my project, tentatively titled Post-Sovereign Constitution
Making: From Practice to Theory.
11. The reference here to a variety of bodies, as against one under the
old regime, makes little sense in Laclau's conception that stresses
uniflcaon and single person leadership. The only way to interpret
this "variety" is as three bodies: the empirical people, the part that

168 social research

 embodies its will, and the leader's body that xmifies the part that still
has heterogeneity in a modem society.
12. He is quite expUcit about this move. In his text "Popuhsm: What's in
a Name?" he asks: Does popuhsm become synonymous vwth pohtics?
His answer is "the answer can only be aftirmave. Popuhsm means
putting into question the institutional order by constmcting an
underdog as an historical agentthat is, an agent that is an other in
relation to the way thing stand. But this is the same as pohtics" (Laclau
2005b). (I thank Carlos de la Torre for this reference). I think the text
should have said the pohtical, in spite of the fact that Castoriadis,
who is being used without attribution, reversed the normal French
usage and called the extraordinary version invented by the Greeks
"politics" (la politique) (Castoriadis 1991).
13. Lefort of cotirse could and would not deny the incorporating role of
popuhsm, by no means universal, which under a democracy would
further extend the democratic logic. But with popuhst embodiment,
the democratic instituons have been transformed in authoritarian
directions, and the inclusion occurs in a pohty that is not democratic.
It is another matter that a future democracy could then rely on a
more inclusive pohty as a result. First, the popuhst transformation
would have to be reversed.
14. This is not to be confused with a multiple-body scheme such as in
Neil Walker (2007), where each "body" ofthe people is given an orga-
nizafional form, and where action is not understood as that of a hier-
archically dominant body, as in Laclau.
15. This does not describe the situation of Solidarity v^th respect to
Lech Walesa, or what Laclau produces as one of his examples. Nelson
Mandela with respect to the African National Congress. Both organi-
zations were highly organized even vwthout their leaders.
16. This argument was already implausible in the case of Hobbes, whose
sovereign could not be in the position even according to him to mle
over the conscience of the subject. It is all the more ridiculous for
Laclau focusing on modem settings.

Political Theology and Populism 169

17. Merleau-Ponfy here followed a critique of Sarfre by his student, the
young Claude Lefort, whom he went on to call "Trotsky's Trotsky."
18. Through the medium of Freud, Laclau adopts some assumptions of
earher crowd and mass sociefy theories even though modem studies
of social movements have demonstrated that it is the already orga-
nized and associated who are the constituents of major movements.
19. Of course, I am using this concept only in an absfract sense. I do not
mean to imply that Laclau speaks for any Marxist-Leninist groups, or
even hke Zizek dreams of the revival of explicitly Leninist pohtics. It
is all the more interesting that he gives an "ultrabolshevik" defense
of authoritarian popuhsm after attacking Lefort for supposedly the
same identification (not actually in Lefort).
20. The point is frankly admitted by Schmitt in Political Theology I
(Schmitt 1985, 68-70). His defenders, busily and rightly refuting the
charge of Nazism for the relevant period, tend to miss this feature
altogether.

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